After 10 weeks in the open-all-year Christmas store, the angel couldn’t take it anymore and hung herself with her price tag.
(Sorry, Jason and I just couldn’t resist…)
After 10 weeks in the open-all-year Christmas store, the angel couldn’t take it anymore and hung herself with her price tag.
(Sorry, Jason and I just couldn’t resist…)
I’ll write a whole post about the wonderful time I had in Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg/Smoky Mountains last weekend with Jason and the other guys he’s touring with and their families. But…you’ll have to wait until next week. Sorry! Here’s a preview:
“Let my words, like vegetables, be tender and sweet for tomorrow I may have to eat them.” —seen on a chalkboard wall in SouleMama’s kitchen
A home office in a closet can be a great solution when you don’t have a room to spare. We have limited closet space but we do have a 46″ by 24″ coat closet in our hallway across from the door to our bedroom. Before discussing my revelation with Jason I immediately started sketching out where everything would fit and where I could put everything that was currently in the hall closet: coats, hats, gloves, scarfs, extra blankets and pillows, vacuum, tools, cans of paint, lightbulbs and other odds and ends. Once I had a plan, I took my idea to corporate for approval. (Joking, but it does help to have a well thought out plan before presenting my crazy ideas to Jason.)
He was fine with my plan! Over the course of a few Saturdays when Jason was out on tour I managed to move everything out of the hall coat closet. Coats are in the closet of the spare room (for now anyway), extra blankets and pillows are in tubs in the attic, and the rest of that stuff is in our new but not-yet-finished laundry room. So on to that empty hall closet …
With Jason again gone on tour I decided to tackle this job on my own to 1) keep myself busy, 2) keep up the weekend warrior pace I’m used to when he’s home, 3) impress him with my renovation skills, and 4) get it done. When we had Jason’s giant birch desktop cut at the hardware store last month I had the guy trim one of the offcuts to 46″ so it would be the right length for my desktop. I used scraps of wood from Jason’s old desk to make little wood ledges on the side walls of the closet to hold up an additional shelf (the top one was already there) and the desk top.
For now my printer is on a crate to the left of my computer with paper underneath. I’m going to come up with another solution since my desk surface is limited.
Jason’s birthday was back on September 16th and I decided to give him a mini surprise by making homemade ice cream cake and taking it to our small group to celebrate. (Small group = Jason, me and three other families from our church that get together once every 2 weeks to hang out, encourage each other, pray for each other, etc.) I’ve made homemade ice cream cake a few times before but it always turned out kind of … ugly. I mean, you can’t go wrong with the taste but it has never looked anything like the $15-25 store-bought kind.
This year I was googling recipes that use ice cream sandwiches because they make the ice cream step a lot easier. I found this Oreo & Fudge Ice Cream Cake recipe from Kraft that uses just five ingredients: ice cream sandwiches, oreos, cool whip, fudge, and jello pudding mix. It was pretty simple and it turned out really pretty!
Once the cool whip on the outside started to thaw it started to get pretty messy but the slices turned out pretty good looking. Most importantly, everyone thought it was D-to-the-licious and the birthday boy was very appreciative.
Have you ever tried Grilled Hobo Fruit Packs of Awesomeness from Today’s Letters? What the what what? First of all, if you’ve never checked out the blog Today’s Letters – go there now. Sweetest blog I’ve ever seen. Everyday Emily writes love letters: two to her husband and a few other to important people and silly loves in her life. Emily and Tim have the most playful and sweet relationships I’ve every witnessed through blogland. Oh, and she responded to my tweet about subbing gingerman cookies for ginger snaps in Fruit Packs of Awesomeness so we’re totally twitter friends now. 🙂 If you want to know what the heck I’m talking about go to the link and MAKE some. You won’t regret it!
I saw an ad for Unplggd’s Roundup of Home Offices In a Closet one day and had an epiphany. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I know people put home offices in closets. That could be the perfect solution! (Between the time of the epiphany and the time of this post, one of my sweet blog buddies, Julia, actually suggested I try a closet as a home office solution. Great minds think alike! Heehee.) Here are some inspiration photos I found:
(All images from Unplggd’s Roundup of Home Offices In a Closet and here and The Black Hole Home Office)
The only hitch: our 55 year old house doesn’t have a whole lot of closet space. The two original bedrooms (master and my office) have closets with sliding doors—not large, not walk-in, and packed with stuff. The third bedroom (Jason’s studio) has a squarish walk-in closet full of musiciany things and is frequently used as an isolation room for his amp.
But wait, we have one more closet … the coat closet in the hallway!
*****
See Home Office Part 1: Small Homes Require/Inspire Creativity if you missed it.
Sorry I’ve been missing this week in the blog world. I’ve been sick. I’ll be back … soon! Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my sweet baby Lucy:
I shared some pictures on Monday of the not-quite-finished main part of Jason’s studio remodel. I was able to find a few before pictures but the rest must be on a different hard drive. When we moved in the room was carpeted. (I can’t find any of those pictures.) Then our cat peed on the carpet various times in various places and we ripped it out and threw it away. (I hate cats. And carpet. Sorry to anyone that I just offended.) Under the carpeting we found that the original flooring had been painted some some kind of white something. It was dirty so we painted it with Kilz. Then we painted it chocolate brown thinking maybe it would match the rest of the house. It didn’t look good. (Again, can’t find any pictures …) Then, we decided to do the whole room in black VCT tiles. Cheap, durable, dark … good for a room that people are dragging amps and guitars and drums in and out of. As this room has evolved into less of a practice room and more of a full-blown home studio a real remodel was desperately needed. Here are some pictures from the previous state:
We love this gigantic, unbelievably-heavy gold vinyl mid-century sofa bed. Besides weighing as much as a car, it’s really long and in the original floor plan of the room there was only 1 option of where it could fit. Right smack in the middle of the room facing the door to the living & dining room.
Jason’s brother’s drums lived in the corner of this room for about 3 years.
Jason’s desk was fitted into the space between these 2 closets covering an impractically high window seat. Not conducive to proper studio monitor acoustics.
This is without a doubt Lucy’s favorite room in the house. She always keeps her toys in here. When Jason is working at home she’ll curl up on the couch or under his feet. Sidenote to a sidenote: I HATE this leather shag rug. I thought it was a bad idea from the beginning. I remember when Jason picked it out at the store and I was distracted on the phone with my sister and couldn’t say “What are you thinking? How are we going to clean that thing?!”
Lucy also loves to look out the backdoor. It’s a window just her height. I always imagine she’s waiting for him to get home from a tour. (Actually, here she seems to be staring at that guitar, doesn’t she?)
The original floor plan was this:
The new floor plan is this:
It’s amazing how much bigger this space feels now that it’s cut in half. Even the main space feels bigger than the old space. Jason took out of the closets which allowed us to fit that giant couch perfectly into that nook. The space behind it is half the impractically high window seat and half a ledge that will eventually be shelves on top. The smaller room, “the loud room”, will be used for storage and tracking. It’s still needing insulation, sound absorption and drywall; shelves; lighting; rug; etc.
I’ll have some finished after pictures whenever the room is fully finished. Don’t hold your breath – it might be a few months. Check out Monday’s post if you didn’t see the pictures of the mostly-finished main space.